Her Mission: Health Sister Patricia Friel Takes On Challenges Of Today As President Of Catholic Hospital.

April 21, 1989|By CAROL BRZOZOWSKI, Staff Writer

Many years ago, the elevation of a religious sister to the top position of a hospital was not news. It was a given.

After all, it was the religious orders -- mostly women`s -- that had started the Catholic hospitals, staffed them and managed them as a mission to the poor.

But these days, vocations to the religious life are diminishing and it is becoming increasingly rare to find women from religious orders running Catholic hospitals. More than half the nation`s 599 Catholic hospitals are now headed by laypeople.

It is this arena that Sister Patricia Friel recently entered as the president and chief executive officer of St. Mary`s Hospital in West Palm Beach.

It is a role with different challenges than those of her foresisters who had rolled up their sleeves to start Catholic hospitals, including St. Mary`s 50 years ago. The mission to the poor continues, but in 1989 South Florida, there has emerged the underlying struggle of balancing the mission with the budget: ``I spend most of my time looking at plans`` for new construction, she said, almost as a lament.

Sister Friel does her business from a simply appointed office that includes a few pieces of religious art. For this interview, focusing on her new position, she is relaxed and friendly. In an interview several days later, after she defended her decision to ban a Planned Parenthood representative from speaking to a ministers` group that meets in the hospital, the no-nonsense, tough- skinned side of Sister Friel became evident.

But making those tough calls is the stuff that such a position is made of.

Bioethical situations surface fast and furiously these days -- infertility solutions, surrogate parenting, genetic testing, to name a few -- with the Vatican attempting to develop moral stances as quickly as the issues surface.

Sister Friel said she thinks about those issues, but her primary concern is still for the poor: those without jobs and the working poor -- all without health insurance. Her concern is especially great in the area of prenatal care for women with low or no incomes.

As the president and CEO at St. Mary`s, Sister Friel is an example of one who has had her feet on every rung of the career ladder on her way up. After finishing nursing school in New York, she joined the Franciscan Sisters of Allegany, N.Y., at age 22.

She was asked to serve as a nurse at St. Mary`s in the 1960s, where she eventually worked as director of nursing before returning to her native New York. There she worked for the state health department and also did private consultation, ``where I worked with entitlement programs and got to see the other side.``

Her observation as a result of that experience: ``The system is in shambles. We`ve got to do something about Medicare. The very wealthy benefit as well as the very poor, but the poor can`t buy supplemental insurance. There`s not a lot of equality in that.``

Sister Friel returned to St. Mary`s three years ago as executive vice president, and at the time described her job as ``keeping it all together: no margin, no mission.``

She is hoping that those who cannot contribute to the margin -- the uninsured ``working poor`` -- can now get help from an HRS office that has been set up at the hospital to help people become eligible for benefits.

Although there are only six religious sisters on a staff of nearly 1,000, Sister Friel maintains the Catholic mission of the hospital while not really knowing how many on the staff are Catholic -- employees are not asked their religious preference.

What is required, however, is that those who come on staff agree to abide by the religious and ethical bylaws while practicing medicine at the hospital. That means, for instance, there will be no abortions there.

But not all medical situations are black and white, even in the realm of morality. For that, many hospitals have established ethics committees. Sister Friel wants to establish one for St. Mary`s, but for now the hospital relies on the advice of a priest-ethicist.

``People think ethics committees are cookbooks,`` she said. ``Each and every issue has to be looked at carefully.``

The hospital does have its own pastoral care team, which is the only one in Palm Beach County until Good Samaritan Hospital establishes its own. The team is on hand to meet the spiritual needs of those at the hospital.

``Since we`re a Catholic hospital, we see that as a priority -- our healing mission -- and we always want to have the whole gamut of services available: spiritual, emotional and physical,`` Sister Friel said.

``We stress a caring attitude: valuing and caring for each person as if they were the only one around,`` Sister Friel said. ``St. Francis of Assisi (the inspiration of her religious order) always said he was as comfortable in the house of kings as in being in the home of the poorest person.

``Everyone is welcome here and we will take care of the poor, and there are many ways to be poor, including poor in spirit. That`s something we try to uplift.``